eenth century by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle, of whom
Hobbes was the most effective. In the eighteenth all prominent thinkers
participated in developing this negative movement, and Rousseau gave
it the practical stimulus which saved it from degenerating into an
unfruitful agitation. Of particular importance was the great fallacy,
which Helvetius propagated, that human intellects are equal. This error
was required for the full development of the critical doctrine. For
it supported the dogmas of popular sovranty and social equality, and
justified the principle of the right of private judgement.

These three principles--popular sovranty, equality, and what he
calls the right of free examination--are in Comte's eyes vicious and
anarchical.[Footnote #1 Op. cit. iv. 36-38.] But it was necessary that
they should be promulgated, because the transition from one organised
social system to another cannot be direct; it requires an anarchical
interregnum. Popular sovranty is opposed to orderly institutions and
condemns all superior persons to dependence on the multitude of their
inferiors. Equality, obviously anarchical in its tendency, and obviously
untrue (for, as men are not equal or even equivalent to one another,
their rights cannot be identical), was similarly necessary to break down
the old institutions. The universal claim to the right of free judgement
merely consecrates the transitional state of unlimited liberty in the
interim between the decline of theology and the arrival of positive
philosophy. Comte further remarks that the fall of the spiritual power
had led to anarchy in international relations, and if the spirit of
nationality were to prevail too far, the result would be a state of
things inferior to that of the Middle Ages.

But Comte says for the metaphysical spirit in France that with all its
vices it was more disengaged from the prejudices of the old theological
regime, and nearer to a true rational positivism than either the German
mysticism or the English empiricism of the same period.

The Revolution was a necessity, to disclose the chronic decomposition
of society from which it resulted, and to liberate the modern social
elements from the grip of the ancient powers. Comte has praise for the
Convention, which he contrasts with the Constituent Assembly with its
political fictions and inconsistencies. He pointed out that the great
vice in the "metaphysics" of the crisis--that is, in the principles of
the revo